The Death of the Fairy Tale Princess

I was having anxiety all yesterday at work. Since the Dow had plunged some 400 points the previous day, and I had watched a chunk of my retirement vanish, I couldn't quite focus, and my stomach was in knots. I don't know how other people get through a twelve hour work day, but my coping mechanism is dreaming of early retirement. When co-workers are snarky, or my boss is screaming, I smile and visualize my one bedroom flat in Florence, or my sailboat in the Caribbean with myself at the helm, looking slightly older, and surprisingly fit. But yesterday, while my boss was yelling, I couldn't imagine anything but my grandmother's old apartment in Chicago with crocheted doilies on the arms of the sofa, and the statue of the Virgin Mary on the end table in the living room draped with rosary beads. The thought of my nest egg beginning to crack was more stress than I could cope with.

It was a long day.

When I got home from work, I immediately flipped on the tube and turned to CNN. Since it was prime time news hour, I figured that the stock market story would be featured prominently. I watched for 15 minutes, and the only thing on CNN was Anna Nicole Smith. So I turned to MSNBC. And still, the same story, the exact same footage! In desperation, I put on Fox News. At least on Fox, there was a huge blow-up of Anna Nicole's boobs which took my mind off of my financial woes for a moment, but no news of the stock market. Here my future was hanging in the balance, and not just mine, but millions of Americans have money tied in some way or another to the markets, and with so many different 24 hour news outlets, why are all of them spending so much air time on a woman who has been dead for two weeks now?

There is no one who appreciates a beautiful woman more than me, but women die every day, they die from cancer, they die from abuse, they die from poverty, they die in war. And I'm sad that she died young, but there are millions of women who have much worse lives, women who do not marry aging millionaires, who die younger. And they don't die in a fancy hotel room, maybe they die without medical attention in horrible conditions, and maybe just a handful of people even note their passing.

Am I wrong in thinking that all of this morbid fascination with the death of one rich white woman, makes the untimely death of every ordinary woman seem less important? When Molly Ivins died last month, there was hardly a word in the mainstream press. Princess Diana died nearly a decade ago, but we still see her face on the pages of the tabloids. We grieved for the blond wife of OJ Simpson for years, and we had never even heard of her before she died. What is wrong wrong with us? Why do women pay more attention to Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears than the woman next door who is raising three children on her own with no child support? Why don't we cry for the women who are dying in Africa from lack of medicine? Or the woman next door with the abusive husband? My greatest fear is that I might die an old woman with no retirement funds, just that crazy old lady on the corner, the one with the chin whiskers. If my nest egg cracks wide open, and I am left with nothing, I hope that my social security check can cover electrolysis.

Our sisters die every day, and we don't even notice their passing.

Something is wrong.

| +Save/Share | |